The Nonviolent War Against Nuclear Power
The motley but well-organized group called the Clamshell Alliance recently mounted the largest anti-nuclear demonstration in American history at Seabrook, New Hampshire, where they met the staunch opposition of industry and Governor Meldrim Thomson. The confrontation, as they say, generated more heat than light.
Lovejoy went to Amherst College in the sixties—he renounces it now, for being “a nice, bourgeois, highfalutin’, nice little Ivy League school.” He protested the Vietnam War while a student, went to Cuba with the Venceremos Brigade after graduation, and then settled down on a farm on a lovely hill in Montague, in western Massachusetts, and became “just an organic farmer.” The farm is a commune, mingling fairly serious husbandry with very serious politics. Lovejoy calls it “an alternative political community” and “liberated territory.”
In 1973, Northeast Utilities announced plans to build a nuclear power plant in Montague, virtually in this farm’s pasture. Right away, Lovejoy and the other residents began reading up on atomic energy, and it didn’t take them long to decide that these plants were the infernal devices of profiteers.
In America up to this time, what objections had been raised against the so-called peaceful atom had been heard mainly in courtrooms. To Lovejoy, the legal approach seemed slow, expensive, and ineffectual. He was looking around for some other recourse when, as a first step toward building a plant, Northeast Utilities erected a weather tower in Montague, on the proposed site. The tower was 500 feet tall; it dominated the horizon. “I just thought it was so obvious and so symbolic and just stuck up there so succinctly that I just knew it would end up tipping over,” Lovejoy said. And so, early on the morning of George Washington’s Birthday, 1974, Lovejoy loosened the guy wires and the structure toppled. Lovejoy then hitchhiked to town and turned himself in. He felt he had done the right thing, “capital-R right,” and told the jury so. He was acquitted on a technicality, to his disappointment, and eventually Northeast Utilities rebuilt the tower. But the story made the New York Times, and friends of Lovejoy’s at Green Mountain Post Films, Inc.—an outfit intimately connected with Montague Farm— made a movie called Lovejoy’s Nuclear War. When I saw the film last June, it left me feeling uncomfortable; these are people who, like some recent Presidents, record their history as they go. But the movie was liked by many. It was widely screened. The legend spread.
The events that followed Lovejoy’s toppling of the tower and the movie’s release are by now fairly well known. Plans for the plant at Montague were deferred, apparently for economic reasons, but in 1976 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) gave the Public Service Company of New Hampshire permission to build a nuclear power plant in the town of Seabrook, forty miles north of Boston, on New Hampshire’s seacoast. The proposed plant would house twin reactors with a total capacity of 2300 megawatts, which is enough electricity for a city of 2 million. In the new generation of nuclear plants, Seabrook would be of merely average size. It would cost, by the latest estimates, $2.6 billion, and it would occupy some forty acres about a mile and a half from the ocean. The reactors would be cooled by seawater, approximately a billion gallons of it a day. The water would be taken in and then discharged, with its temperature elevated some 30 or 40 degrees, through two long, deep tunnels running under salt marsh and clamflats out to a point nearly a mile offshore. Biologists have expressed considerable uncertainty about the effects of this heated water on marine life. In addition, the plant would lie in an area where a significant earthquake could occur, and within five miles of some very popular beaches.
For these and other reasons, Seabrook appears to have been among the most assailable sites yet chosen for a nuclear plant. One of the members of the NRC’s licensing board voted against issuing the construction permit, and though not unprecedented, dissenting opinions on these permits have been very rare indeed. Three groups—the Audubon Society of New Hampshire, the Seacoast Anti-Pollution League, and the New England Coalition on Nuclear Pollution—had been fighting the proposed station for three years, in hearings and in federal court. When the construction permit was issued, they continued their legal campaign. But others decided it was time to adopt tactics resembling Sam Lovejoy’s.
A number of small environmental and anti-nuclear groups from the seacoast and other parts of New England, including Montague Farm, formed an alliance. In honor of the clam beds off the proposed site, they named the new organization the Clamshell Alliance—members call it “The Clam for short, and themselves “Clams.” They agreed to use “direct action,” including “nonviolent civil disobedience”—or “C.D.,” in the parlance of The Clam—in order to nip this new nuke in the bud. So they started staging “occupations” at Seabrook: they would march onto the construction site and stay until the police escorted them off. Their efforts gained national attention in April 1977, when 1414 Clams were arrested for tenting on the site.
The occupation in 1977 led to the largest mass arrest in American history, but it was nothing compared to what seemed in the offing for the next year. The Clams promised to come back to Seabrook in June of 1978, at least 3000 and maybe 5000 strong, and they said they’d be shutting construction down for good this time, and that they would bring hoes and seeds, shovels and saplings, with which to “restore” the Public Service Company’s land.
This was brave talk. Although the construction permit had been suspended once already, for a month in 1977, and although pending rulings by the NRC and the Environmental Protection Agency could force another suspension, or even a cancellation, the Public Service Company and the various other utilities with a share in the project had gone ahead and had spent about $400 million. They had erected buildings, including their own cement plant. They had dug an enormous hole, a sort of coliseum, and had filled it with a maze of steel and concrete.
Clearly, the companies felt that no federal agency would dare stop them now. And in New Hampshire there were powerful people who intended to see that no one else did, most vocal among these the publisher of the Manchester Union Leader, William Loeb, and Loeb’s favorite politician, Governor Meldrim Thomson, a man who holds opinions as passionately as Sam Lovejoy does. Thomson believes in nuclear power, as well as in the virtual abolition of taxes, American ownership of the Panama Canal, the status quo in South Africa, and so on. He is one of the vigorous spokesmen for the pronuclear forces who hold that, under normal conditions, nuclear plants are far less hazardous to the environment than conventional ones. Moreover, they say that the danger of a major accident and the problems of waste disposal have been exaggerated. But economics lies at the heart of their brief: Seabrook, they claim, would help provide the energy for tomorrow’s industrial growth, and reduce American reliance on imported oil.
The Public Service Company had requested and received permission from its local utilities commission to charge its customers for some of the costs of Seabrook’s construction while the work was being done. The practice wasn’t popular, and in 1978, an election year, both houses of the New Hampshire legislature passed a bill prohibiting it. Thomson vetoed the bill.
From the State House and from spokespeople for the Clams came rumors and warnings. This time the police might not make arrests, but instead might use gas and fire hoses and attack dogs. There was talk that Thomson might close his state’s borders; that some Clams were going to bring fence cutters and attempt to block construction workers; talk of “unorganized worker violence,” of “agents” hired by the state or by Public Service or by both, hired to infiltrate The Clam and see to it that this occupation got ugly. What all of the hoopla made clear was that Thomson and the Clams have a symbiotic relationship: they attract attention to each other.
While the drums were beating, New Hampshire’s new attorney general, Tom Rath, was persuading the Public Service Company to loan The Clam eighteen acres of land adjacent to the actual construction site for a legal rally. Thomson went along with the idea. The Clam balked at first, but about two weeks before the scheduled occupation, the organization’s coordinating committee bypassed The Clam’s cumbersome process of making decisions and accepted too. The protestors would march onto the eighteen acres on Saturday, June 24, and be gone by 3 P.M. the following Monday.
William Loeb didn’t like the deal. He preferred fire hoses. Uncharacteristically, he criticized Thomson in several of his editorials (printed daily on the paper’s front page). It was fairly mild criticism; Loeb merely accused Thomson of being stupid, and that is not strong language from Loeb, who has accused President Carter and Andrew Young of being accomplices to mass murder in southern Africa. But the plan had obvious merit for New Hampshire; mainly, it looked like a relatively cheap way out. And Thomson must have realized that. As for the Clams, it was obvious to their leaders that the spurning of Rath’s proposal was hurting their national public relations and costing them much of their hard-earned support on the seacoast. Essentially, Rath had found a way to put both The Clam and his client, the Governor, in custody.
How does one prepare to do peaceful battle with an incipient nuclear generating facility? The Clam has the answers, has worked them out so well, in fact, that in 1977 not a single occupier was observed committing a violent act or, for that matter, smoking marijuana or drinking. When The Clam gets ready to go into tactical formation, it first of all requires that potential occupiers undergo something called “nonviolence training.” The techniques were worked out by Quakers, whose influence on the organization has been direct and strong, and by veterans of the early small occupations. They have passed the lore on to other Clams who have become trainers themselves. The trainers train more new Clams—several thousand in 1978—who are then split up into “affinity groups.” Affinity groups are virtually self-sufficient; each contains a “notetaker/spokesperson,” a “medical person,” a “peace-keeper” (who looks out for unstable Clams and possible agents), and a couple of “support people.”
About thirty enemies of nuclear power and I learned all this the week before the main event, in the Unitarian Church in Amherst, Massachusetts. Our trainers in the art of nonviolence, one male and one female, both in their twenties, first sat us down in a circle and began the process known as “personal sharing of the day.” We had to give our names—not surnames; Clams often seem to operate on a first-name basis only—and say something about the sort of day we’d had. “I got up in the afternoon, watched Star Trek, and came here,” said a young fellow with hair as splendid, long, and curly as that of Louis Quatorze. “Today was my day off,” said a smiling, chubby young woman. “I slept till one and made eggplant parmigiana and came here.” They were students of college age, a nurse, some mechanics, almost all of them young and enthusiastic. We talked a great deal, in a language sometimes esoteric. (In the movement, the word “people” has crowded out the word “you,” so that when our trainers addressed us as a group, they asked us, “What do people think?” It takes a little getting used to.)
Led by the trainers, we discussed the meaning of nonviolence and our fears and feelings. Skits were performed, approximating certain dangerous situations: trainer gets on all fours and growls like German shepherd, trainee is told to get up and run from trainer/police dog, does so, trainer/attack dog chases down trainee and makes as if to masticate foolish trainee’s leg.
During breaks we would do a “light and lively,” a term that can mean a game or an exercise. And we sang some songs, and trainers and trainees offered each other advice: If confronted by an angry construction worker, remember, he’s “a human being.” (Among Clams, this is a refrain.) “Yeah,” said a trainee, thinking of angry construction workers, “don’t come on superior.” Another added, “Understand that there are parts of our culture that they may not be able to deal with.”
The most crucial exercise, it seemed to me, was “role-playing.” Trainees formed two lines—these are called “hassle lines.” Each person in one line faced a person in the other, and one of them played demonstrator while the other acted the part of an angry resident of the seacoast, sick of all this nonsense. Walking around listening in, I got the impression that those playing angry residents were really getting into it, and were winning most of the arguments. (Demonstrator to angry resident: “They’re trying to build one of these things in my hometown, too.” Angry resident to demonstrator: “Why are you here, then? Why aren’t you back in your hometown?”) When I left, the trainees had formed affinity groups and were sitting in separate circles talking softly.
I felt I was ready for anything now, even Governor Thomson, and on Friday, June 23, the eve of the occupation that wasn’t going to be an occupation, I went to Keene, New Hampshire, to hear the Chief address the annual convention of the New Hampshire American Legion. I went to see if he was ready, if he too had girded his loins. He had.
A meeting of the Legion is something like a high church service. There is a lot of standing and sitting and standing again (up for the Pledge of Allegiance, then down for a while, then up for the recitation of the preamble of the Legion’s constitution), and a lot of “covering” and “uncovering”—at the command “cover,” one puts on one’s blue and gold garrison cap. It was the Governor’s kind of crowd. Thomson, it will be remembered, once suggested that nuclear weapons be distributed to the national guard of New Hampshire. His son, Peter, who is also his chief of staff, has been quoted as saying that the Governor is really “a frustrated Army general.”
Thomson is a short man with close-cropped gray hair and, as befitted the occasion, he was wearing a no-nonsense expression. He was decked out in a fine tan suit and his shoes did gleam. (It is well known that the breadth of a politician’s ambition is directly proportional to the quality and shininess of his shoes, and on that basis I guessed that Thomson’s aspirations are at least national.) Accompanied by the sergeant at arms, he took the podium, got a standing ovation, and waited patiently while the commander offered the legionnaires a resolution supporting the construction of the nuke at Seabrook.
Thomson spoke about Seabrook first. “We have conducted in-depth preparation for whatever may occur. We have the National Guard fully alerted. There will be a law-enforcement squad on the site”— he lowered his brows—“and this is nothing more or less than a squad trained in riot control. There will be dogs inside the fence and a large number of state troopers on hand and troopers from other states.”
Why was he telling them all this? “Because it’s important to use this as an analogy. We hope for a peaceful demonstration but we are prepared to see that, at whatever cost, the laws of the state are firmly enforced.” And that was how America should be. He said that he had flown recently in an F-111 fighterbomber, the first governor who dared do it. “It was a wonderful experience. I only wish we had a thousand more of them.” New Hampshire, he reassured the legionnaires, keeps a National Guard plane on alert around the clock, and he urged them, in this election year, to send to Congress representatives who are ready to see that America is as well prepared for war as New Hampshire is. “This means that we need and support the B-1 bomber, the cruise missile, and the neutron bomb . . . anything that gives us an edge in a world of conflict, terrorism, and defeatism.” He was done, and they cheered and gave him a plaque.
Part of the eighteen acres surrendered to the Clamshell Alliance was once a garbage dump, and on that side of the allotted land stands the chain link fence enclosing the fledgling nuke. The rest of the borrowed land is piny woods. A wide dirt road, freshly cut and perhaps half a mile long, divides the two landscapes and runs straight as an airstrip out to a gate, which opens onto Route 1. Down that highway and in through the gate, marching in columns of two, came the Clams all that fine Saturday morning.
They strode, danced, sauntered, and hobbled in, some with papooses, some carrying staves, all wearing white occupiers’ armbands, on ankles and wrists and thighs as well as on biceps. They came humpbacked under bulging nylon knapsacks attached to sturdy Kelty frames, and also under faded Boy Scout packs; some were lugging duffels and potato sacks, a few were pushing wheelbarrows. In bare feet, boots, and imported slippers made in China of inferior materials, in long shapeless dresses and L. L. Bean hiking shorts, in vests from three-piece suits worn over bare chests, carrying pinwheels to demonstrate the power of wind. They lugged guitars and played recorders. Many wore T-shirts, freighted with convictions: “Oregonians Cooperating to Protect Whales,” “Decentralize Everything.” Watching at the gate, I heard snatches of song: “Oh it is not fair to say there is no alternative energy today.” Signs, big and little, written on cardboard and stuck into hats, painted on cloth and carried on poles; “Nukes Kill—Plug Into the Sun,” “Smash the Atom Lose the World Smash the State Win the Sun.” Signs bearing the names of affinity groups, of which some were topical, such as “Snail Darters,” others technological—“Photovoltaics.” The Clams had taken on names that were forthright—“The Dyke Brigade”— and names that were carefree—“Charles River AntiNuclear Kite-Flying Society.” And names that cut deep, such as “Nukus Interrupts”: this affinity group has pitted itself against the “patriarchal society,” which, the members feel, spawned nuclear power in the first place.
I thought I saw approximately 4000 that day, though the Governor said there were fewer. They came from every corner of New England. The “Solar Rollers” affinity group had ridden their ten-speeds all the way from Amherst, “like modern-day Paul Reveres,” singing, to the tune of “A Bicycle Built For Two,” a song that one of their number, Al Giordano, made up:
People, people, nuclear power plants kill With radiation and soaring electric bills.
We know they are too expensive and capital intensive, So be our guest and join our quest For a future for me and you.
Allies of the Alliance had come from California, Ohio, and Michigan. One pilgrim had ridden his bike all the way from Omaha. A group from around Denver, who had been protesting against their own Rocky Flats nuclear armament plant by blocking the railroad siding that serves it, camped on the railroad tracks leading into the Seabrook nuke. It made them homesick; these tracks were harder to sleep on than the ones at Rocky Flats—“Don’t they keep up the roadbed around here?” Dr. Benjamin Spock flew all the way from the Virgin Islands, where he’d been sailing. He dandled a couple of occupiers’ babies for the TV cameras.
“Dr. Spock, what would you say to a new mother about nuclear power?”
“I would tell her that for the sake of her child, she must get involved in demonstrations like this one. I would say that is more important than measles shots.”
Expecting thousands of visitors on Sunday, the Clams erected many things, among them a tall, goodlooking windmill, a bunch of solar cookers, a bridge over a small, algae-choked stream—they hung a sign on this bridge; it read, “Bridge Over Troubled Waters.” They also set up a bandstand, not far from the garbage, and from here singers Jackson Browne and Pete Seeger donated their voices to the cause.
Earnestness, sincerity, seemed the order of the day. On the whole, the Clams have displayed a sort of neopuritanism during their occupations. This appears to have frustrated William Loeb, for the only evidence of immorality he has been able to report is The Clam’s advice that “birth control supplies” might be something an occupier would like to bring along. Visible love on those campgrounds had a sexless air: folks massaging each other, gazing into each other’s eyes.
A blond, beatific-looking woman in her very early twenties named Amy, a member of the Solar Rollers, told me, “It’s real important to realize that a lot of people here are involved in other aspects of political involvement.” She herself is a member of the Movement for A New Society, a utopian group, which practices, as one observer put it, “the politics of nice.” I met gays and feminists, Quakers, Marxists possessed with the gray iron of dogma, and a Vietnam veteran who was bridling under The Clam’s rule against marijuana. “That’s a real intrusion on my life-style, man.”
Patrick Malone, one of the contingent from Rocky Flats, had hitchhiked and bused his way east carrying a gas mask, among other things. At a “die-in” staged over the weekend on Hampton Beach, he played the evil “radiation man”; a Buddhist monk brought the actors back to life after Patrick wiped them out. Patrick was in his thirties. He had been a building inspector. “Now I’m actually a professional protestor. I make my living selling buttons, T-shirts, and an item I call a peaceable, which is a stuffed animal.” He was wearing sweat pants and sneakers. He said, just before I left him, “When I get through with this, I’m gonna abolish fire.”
It sounded like an ambitious undertaking.
“Only part joking,” he said. “The basic nature of fire is destructive. It’s how we got to nuclear plants, when you think about it.”
Of course, there were many Clams with short hair and little ideology. And Sunday brought a great influx of sympathizers in Lacoste shirts. One of Sunday’s visitors was Cliff Campbell, a resident of New Hampshire who owns a small publishing business. His objections to nukes were not philosophical. “I’m just afraid of them, I guess. Not enough has been investigated. I just think they’re going too fast.”
I asked him what he thought of the Clams he had met on the site.
“Yeah,” he said. “There are a lot of crazies here. But they got as much right to be here as anyone. Probably if it wasn’t for them this wouldn’t be happening.”
A lot of the Clams were grumbling as they arrived. “I’d be ready to come back and do C.D. real soon, because this is really upsetting me, this fairlike atmosphere,” the gentle biker Amy told me. It was amazing how many Clams professed disappointment at not getting a chance to be arrested or gassed. The other common complaint was that the leadership had violated “Clam process” by taking it upon themselves to accept Rath’s proposal. In this alliance, all must agree on general policies, and, at least in theory, any one Clam can “block consensus.”
The local groups, not the leaders, are supposed to make the decisions. Actually, The Clam is supposed to be leaderless, but of course it isn’t. Carleton Eldredge, the rather unpredictable district attorney of Rockingham County, has had to deal with the organization on several occasions, and he says, “The leaders resist identifying themselves, but when they want something, the same people show up to talk to you.” He also said, “They’re as sophisticated in many ways as Caesar’s legions, and as clever as the communist underground.”
The leaders, naturally, are the people who do most of the work between occupations. A couple of the more visible come from Montague Farm, and a much larger number from the coast of New Hampshire. Most are past thirty, and all could be described as sophisticated and experienced in one important aspect of protest or another. If they tend to try to hide in the crowd, it is not to outfox officials such as Eldredge but to avoid criticism from other Clams. Sam Lovejoy, the most obvious leader, was in deep hiding; he didn’t even come to Seabrook this time.
A smart move, because a group from Boston, calling themselves “Clams for Democracy,” were handing out leaflets denouncing “the leadership” for its “private dealings with the state in recent weeks.” On Saturday, one of this group was walking around the site wearing a sandwich board that announced he was conducting “a silent vigil and fast” to protest the arbitrary actions of The Clam’s elite. What all this led to was an unofficial meeting on Sunday morning attended by representatives of 222 affinity groups. The issue before this body was, did people want to break the leadership’s deal with the state and stay on the site past 3 P.M Monday?
The two people who attempted to direct the meeting, this informal Clam Congress, were called “facilitators.” One of the Clams for Democracy started things off by getting up and denouncing the male facilitator, then adding, “However, I don’t want to take up the first hour with that, so I’ve agreed to drop it.” Then the female facilitator, Claudia by name, ordered “the media” to stand and identify themselves. After that, chaos reigned. A voice from the crowd: “I have a point of process. Do people want consensus?” But other voices promised to block consensus on any move to take up the matter of consensus. For at least an hour, they argued about what to discuss first. “I’m getting very frustrated and confused,” cried a woman from the crowd, “and I don’t want to get angry, so I won’t say any more.” Then Claudia said, “I don’t feel I’m competent or experienced enough to facilitate this meeting, so I’m going to step down.” Pete, the male facilitator, said, “I want to congratulate Claudia,” and she got a big hand from the crowd for her humility. But then they had to find another female facilitator.
Around this time, a helicopter circled over the crowd, and the Clams, agreeing about something for the first time that morning, shook their fists at it, chanting, “No helicopters! No helicopters!” This was the Governor’s chopper. I thought of him up there looking down, commenting perhaps on the deployment of his troopers, said to be somewhere behind the chain link fence, and wondering what was going on here. Then the helicopter veered off and headed west. Thomson was making for Manchester and the scheduled pronuke rally, which had been advertised as a “Clambake.” I left the Clams still arguing and followed the Governor to the JFK Coliseum in Manchester.
Thomson’s speech at the coliseum was followed by a long-running harangue from a local auctioneer out on the blacktop behind the building: “Come up here, son. How old are you? Nine? What do you think about nuclear power? Did you hear that folks, that was from a nine-year-old. ‘Nuclear power means jobs.’ Did you hear that down in Washington, Jimmy? That comes from a nine-yearold, Jimmy . . .” A singer named Dennis Delay belted out a few pronuclear songs, but, poor fellow, the sound system inside that dreary coliseum had all the delicacy of a drill sergeant’s voice, and when Delay tried to get the small crowd to sing with him “This Land Is My Land,” no one seemed to know the words. The oddest moment of the pronuke rally came when an MIT student named Dale Lancaster, who said he had studied nuclear power in depth, tried to get the crowd to shout during various parts of his speech. “So what kind of power do we want? Do we want clean nuclear power? I say, Yes. What do you say?” At this point the crowd was supposed to roar, but they didn’t. Only Lancaster did. He yelled, “Yes!” into the microphone, then raised a fist and said, “All right! Okay!”
It was a dispirited crowd of no more than 800, made up largely of construction workers, many of whom had been bused from Connecticut and Massachusetts. When I started talking to a couple of plumbers from Hartford, intending to ask them why they had come and who had paid for the bus, a union official stepped between us and accused me of being “a scab.” A little later, a burly welder named A1 Axel grabbed me by the front of my shirt in the middle of an interview and said, “What’s running through your mind right now?” “I’m hoping you’ll let go of me,” I offered. “You think I’m gonna slug ya, right?” he said. “But I’m not gonna slug ya. It’s the same thing with nuclear power. People assume the worst and that’s the wrong way to think.”
Right up to the end, William Loeb saw trouble coming. On Monday morning, over the story about Sunday’s chaotic meeting of Clams, he ran this headline: “Alliance Cracks, Threat of Violence Grows.” But the Clams’ alliance hadn’t cracked any more than Loeb’s and Thomson’s had, which is to say, not much. Moreover, after hours of boring talk, the meeting ended with the Clams agreeing to go home on time and not break the deal with Rath.
Estimates varied, but on Sunday, when the general public was invited, there had been something like 18,000 people on the site. (The Governor said the figure was 8000, but none of the dozens of reporters agreed.) Now, early on Monday afternoon, the woods were empty. I couldn’t find a piece of litter anywhere, just footprints. Near the Bridge Over Troubled Waters, a group of Clams stood in a circle, their arms hung upon each other’s shoulders, as they stared at each other, smiling, humming. Then, unexpectedly, the Governor’s helicopter landed, and, accompanied by Rath, his own entourage, and a score of greedy cameramen, he inspected the site. As he came back past the Bridge Over Troubled Waters, some of the Clams came forward.
Thomson shook hands with Elizabeth Boardman, a Quaker in her sixties who was instrumental in putting together the nonviolence training. He shook hands with Rennie Cushing, an important organizer from New Hampshire in his thirties, and with Steve Hilgartner, another young Clam who helped run media relations. “Governor, I want to thank you for cooperating with the anti-nuclear movement,” said Hilgartner.
“We weren’t exactly cooperating,” said Thomson. “We made an agreement and kept it.”
And then, after a little more of such repartee, no blood drawn, the contestants retired to their respective corners and claimed victory.
The motley Clam had kept its promises, displaying once again remarkable self-control, and in the process it had strengthened its support on the seacoast. The Clams could say that this had been the largest anti-nuclear demonstration in American history, that the rally proved their movement was growing. A demonstration of 18,000, however, couldn’t be called evidence that anti-nuke fervor was sweeping the country.
Thomson called the occupation of 1978 “a very distinct and humiliating defeat” for the Clams. They had promised to shut things down, and the Governor could say—as he did—that “at no time was any portion of construction halted.”
However, he couldn’t speak with such confidence for long. A few days after the Clams left Seabrook, taking all of their litter, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission suspended the Public Service Company’s construction permit. In response to a suit brought by the three New Hampshire environmental groups that had been waging the legal battle against Seabrook for years, the First Circuit Court of Appeals had ordered the federal EPA to review its last, favorable ruling on the plant’s cooling system. The NRC made it clear that the permit would not be restored at least until the EPA finished its review.
The suspension was costly—about a half million dollars a day. Spokesmen for the company claimed that it would cost them as much to finish the plant and then scrap it as it would to quit building it today. “They have to pay interest on their construction bonds and other overhead,” explained a securities analyst on Wall Street who specializes in the bonds of public utilities. “If they have to stop work, that plant becomes a nonearning asset, what I call a half-a-billion-dollar paperweight.”
Investment in nuclear power has been slowing down, partly because of what is generally perceived on Wall Street as a growing stringency and unreliability in federal regulation. The suspension of the permit for Seabrook was significant; it could only increase the unease of investors and utilities about nuclear power.
Suspensions of permits during construction of nuclear sites have been uncommon. This one was cause for jubilation among the Clams, especially since the NRC’s ruling immediately followed their demonstration. The NRC claimed the timing was coincidental, and it appears to have been, but remarkably so. One Clam called it “karmic.”
Perhaps questions about the timing of the NRC’s ruling are beside the point. But what struck me about the long weekend at Seabrook was how often attention turned to peripheral issues: schisms, facilitators, C.D., “threats of violence,” communism, birth control devices. I got the feeling that, for many people in both camps, nuclear power was less the central issue than the forum to which they’d brought their visions of how the world ought to be. The technical issues, matters of safety and so on, are perhaps resolvable. Obviously, there is no resolving the philosophical disputes: Meldrim Thomson, in a flight suit, helmeted, buckled in, and grinning, is aloft in an F-111, and meanwhile, out in Rocky Flats, Colorado, the cheerful “radiation man” lies by the railroad tracks in his sleeping bag, telling his comrades that the way things went at Seabrook, he may get to work on abolishing fire sooner than he had expected.